In the United States an estimated 240 million emergency calls are made to 911 each year. According to the FCC and the national 911 service, greater than 71% of these calls are made using cellular telephones while approximately 28% are made from land lines. Emergency phone calls are generated by individuals for a plurality of reasons. These emergency assist request phone calls to 911 can include reasons such as but not limited to an allergic reaction to food, choking and catastrophic incident such as a motor vehicle crash. When these emergency assist calls are made, every second is critical to the betterment, outcome and survival of the emergency victim.
One issue with the current national 911 Service emergency alert notification system is that the caller may receive a busy signal. It's difficult to imagine that this could take place but records indicate that approximately five 4 million callers to 911 received a busy signal as recently as 2014. This obviously can result in the loss of life or delays in an emergency victim's emergency medical care. The current 911 infrastructure does not offer any additional means of communicating with the emergency operation centers and as a result there have been recorded instances of lives lost due to the current system limitations.
Another issue with the current 911 service is the lack of available medical information regarding the emergency victim. During the receipt of a 911 emergency phone call, the emergency operation center operators are typically required to assess the current situation and provide first responders with location and characteristics regarding the emergency. Absent from this information is any detailed medical history about the emergency victim or otherwise patient that is involved in the emergency. Medical characteristics such as current medications, allergies, chronic disorders and the like are not known to the first responders when arriving on the scene of an emergency. Many times knowledge of these characteristics would influence the type, level and quality of emergency care implemented during the emergency. Additionally, it is often the case that no other individual proximate to the emergency has knowledge of these medical characteristics belonging to the emergency victim.
Accordingly, there is a need for an emergency notification system that includes the registration of users wherein during the registration certain medical characteristics are obtained and recorded so that this user supplied information can be utilized and/or dispatched to EMS during the event of an emergency. It is further identified that there is a need to provide an emergency notification system that provides collaboration with emergency responders and registrants of the system of the present invention.